


Porcelain

by Imagining_in_the_Margins



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Autism, Autism Spectrum, Autistic Meltdown, Autistic Spencer Reid, Café, Coffee Shops, Comfort, F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, POV Spencer Reid, Sensory Overload
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:21:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28924998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagining_in_the_Margins/pseuds/Imagining_in_the_Margins
Summary: Autistic!Reader has a meltdown in the cafe. Luckily, there is a Dr. Reid nearby.
Relationships: Spencer Reid & Reader, Spencer Reid & You, Spencer Reid/Reader, Spencer Reid/You
Comments: 3
Kudos: 96





	Porcelain

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warning: Autistic meltdown, self-harm (hitting), sensory overload

I have become convinced over my decades of existence that there is no place with sounds more varied and chaotic than a cafe. For all intents and purposes, I should despise this place. The pungent, conflicting smells and the tight spaces filled with grumpy people should repel me like two north poles of a magnet.

And the sounds. Again, the sounds. The cashier till ringing and electric machines whirring. The customer chatter and the clatter of glassware. It was nothing but lawless pandemonium. There was no rhyme or reason to what you would hear, and the patterns were jagged and imprecise. I couldn’t predict what would happen with any better accuracy than I could guess someone’s name. I might get it right occasionally, but would it really be worth the energy to try? My brain would try to focus on everything and succeed at nothing. No matter how much time I spent there, I wasn’t be able to identify anything. But that day, all I could hear was the sound of the faulty faucet.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

A particular, predictable pattern repeating a reliable rhythm over and over.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

And all I could see was the woman who seemed to hear it, too. What was left of my faculties was focused on her finger, tapping gently against the table with an identical tempo.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

She did it every time she came. Or at least, every time I’d seen her there. Part of me wanted to alert the staff of how much water they were wasting – over 20 gallons a day – but the rest of me was too scared. Worried that if the noise stopped, she wouldn’t find anything worth focusing on in this cafe. That she would disappear with the only sound that I’d grown to love.

There were many sounds to notice in a busy cafe. But that day I heard a sound that overwhelmed all of the others.

I wasn’t paying attention, and I would feel guilty about it for a long time. Although realistically I understand that I couldn’t have predicted the actions of other people well enough to prevent disaster, I still found myself wishing I could have warned her before she left the counter with her oversized porcelain cup.

I wish I could have warned the others how she only looks at their feet, and that she wouldn’t guess that they would’ve stepped into her way at the last second while they dilly dallied on their phone. I wish I could have warned her before the cup tumbled to the ground and became dozens of ricocheting shards and boiling liquid over the floor.

That sound of glass and gasps would resonate in my head for far too long.

The only good thing it did was alert me to the fact she’d also fallen, and was now soaked in brown liquid, avoiding prying eyes that she felt obligated to meet. It was a mistake. I watched as panic overtook her the second that she saw them. The others would read her eyes as a cry for help, and in many ways, it was, but not the kind they thought.

She was swamped behind a small crowd, torn from my vision when I wanted to reach out to her most. But just like her, my legs were frozen by the hectic scene that followed. To someone else, it might have seemed so leisurely and forgettable. But for her, for us, it was something else.

I could feel it. I could feel the hands reaching and grabbing and sweeping over my skin and the broken glass. The feel of still-warm coffee seeping into the fabric on my skin, the smell becoming one with the threads. My breathing increased and the world went dizzy with everything happening at once.

“Are you alright?” someone asked, but there was no answer. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”

“Hey—“ I tried to interject. I tried, but the words caught on the lump in my throat and my hands just gripped the table rather than help propel me forward. But my hands knew where to be, and theirs did not.

I watched disaster unfold, with a stranger grabbing hold of her arm with both hands.

“Let me help,” they said.

They didn’t know. 

“No!” she shouted, but she didn’t move quick enough. Someone else grabbed her other arm, trying to help her from the ground still littered with hazardous pieces of porcelain and the coffee that dripped from her dress.

“No, no, _**no**_!” she tried again.

But they didn’t listen. They didn’t know what her ‘no’ meant. I felt like the only person in the room that understood, and yet I couldn’t make myself move. I couldn’t run into the fray just to add another set of hands doing too much. My heart wrenched in my chest, a punishment for my own cowardice as I watched her flounder in their hands until she could manage to wrestle free from one person.

“Jeez, sorry, I was just trying to help…” the woman muttered before leaving to have her ego soothed by other strangers that spoke her language.

But who would help that girl who tapped loving rhythms against the wood? If not me, if I couldn’t get up, what would become of her?

“Please!” she cried, the word harsh and forced through puckered cheeks. And it almost worked. They almost understood that the only help she needed was space and patient understanding. She just needed time for her mind to catch up to the sounds, the hands, the people, the porcelain.

It almost worked, but once the last hand released her, she was already lost in a terrible, torturous place. I could hear her thoughts as clear as I’d heard the synchronous dripping and tapping. As balled fists hit her skull, I could hear her screaming

_Too much, too much, too much_.

That was what made my legs sweep from their place, launching me in her direction in a horribly late fashion to try and prevent the inevitable. It wasn’t enough — I was too late.

I could see her arm shake against the unforgiving grip of someone else, trying to correct her in the worst possible way. Holding her down in a display of force and authority that never did work out for people like us.

“Hey, let go of her!” I croaked, barely recognizing the strained sound of my vocal cords. They didn’t listen, though. Not until my hand was just as ruthless in its grip, prying this stranger away from her. And it was my turn, then, to feel the too much of everything. I knew there was porcelain cutting through my shoes, but the pressure was nothing compared to the hands finding me, instead, trying to stop things from escalating.

Hands that would remind me of men in jumpsuits labeled with a number instead a name. Hands that felt like doctors prodding my body to try and find evidence of a decay I watched happen to someone else. Hands that held me before letting me go on purpose.

Hands that hurt. Too much, too much, too much.

When I opened my eyes again, she was gone. Fluttered out of sight like a bird that finally made its way out of the cement cage of a parking garage, with no regard for the nest she left behind or the fact her wings were too atrophied to make it very far.

“What the hell is wrong with her?”

The question lit a fire in my lungs that I wish had been present just a few seconds earlier.

“What’s wrong with her?!” I shouted back, earning horrified stares from the people who still thought she was the one at fault, “You just grabbed her! She was _scared_!”

“I was just trying to help!”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t,” I spat, too fueled by regret and self-hatred to care about the wounds that might result. I couldn’t care about these people when there was a bird with broken wings somewhere on the streets.

I grabbed her headphones that I’d seen enough times to know like the back of my hand, fleeing my belongings the same way she had. I should’ve at least had the capacity to hope that no one would take them, but I would have considered the loss worth my while either way.

The whole problem felt worlds away once I stepped out of the stifling cafe, quickly spotting her sat halfway down the street. She was curled up on the curb, her hands over her ears and her body gently rocking at the same tempo as the faucet.

If she noticed me approaching, she did nothing to indicate to me that she was aware of my presence. Even when I sat down next to her, she barely moved from her spot.

“Hey, I’m sorry, I...“

My voice must have done something to break through the car horns and town’s chatter, because she jumped, turning to look at me before I could explain myself.

“I brought you these,” I said while presenting her headphones to her. 

Her nose twitched as she stared at the object, blinking her eyes closed tight to rid them of tears. Once she was confident that we were both real and unassuming, she snatched them up and slid them over her ears.

Then we just sat there, decompressing and drinking in the sounds of the city that seemed so much less chaotic in comparison to the cafe. Slowly but surely, her body began to relax as she worked the tension from her muscles with small, repetitive moments. The two of us watched the cars passing by in the same irregular rhythm that the people cycled through the place we’d left, counting the time between streetlights and finding anything to think about to distract us from everything we’d done wrong. When the noise was interrupted, it was by a voice I’d rarely heard speak more than a few words.

“I know you.”

I turned to her, surprised to see that she was meeting my eyes with a burning intensity that I wouldn’t have expected, and certainly wasn’t prepared to meet.

“What?”

“You’re Dr. Reid,” she said.

“How do you know my name?” I chuckled awkwardly, suddenly feeling as thought all the headlights on the road were aimed at me like a spotlight. I got the feeling she also felt embarrassed, like she’d said something wrong.

She shied further away from me, trying to find words to correct the mistake she couldn’t place. “That’s what they put on your to-go orders.”

“Ah!” That made sense. Of course, I probably shouldn’t have made such a loud exclamation, although it wasn’t enough to spook her. That was enough for me. “Well, my name is Spencer. The barista just likes to make fun of me.”

“That’s mean,” she whispered with bowed brows and a pout that both broke my heart and filled me with butterflies.

“No, it’s okay! We’re just playing around with each other. I am a doctor.”

It was definitely the wrong thing to say, because no sooner had the word left my mouth than her face had scrunched into a disgusted snarl.

“I don’t like doctors,” she mumbled, breaking eye contact and shifting her weight to the side farther away from me. I suppose a normal person would have been offended, but I was acutely aware of why she probably wasn’t a fan of medical professionals. It was my fault, really, for expecting her to realize I was in the minority of pretentious assholes who demanded to be referred to by their honorific. 

“Oh! Not that kind of doctor. I study math, mostly,” I explained, watching the way the relief transferred back and forth between us until we returned to our previous positions. She seemed so much happier that silence fell over us again, and I found myself wondering how long I’d been wasting my time watching her from across the way. How long I’d deprived us both of the other’s company.

But that wasn’t the time to think about luck. Not when she still seemed so stressed.

“Is there something I can do for you?” I asked, instead. She responded with her own equally exhausted question.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged, “It seems like you’re not having the best day, and I want to make it better.”

It felt rude to point out the obvious… but it _was_ obvious. I mean, we were sitting on a city curb with disheveled, stained clothes. And, because of my stupidity, tears were added to the mix. The choked sobs came so quickly that it was almost like she’d been holding them back for the benefit of the random strangers passing us by. I knew I certainly didn’t want her to hold back on my account.

Then again, seeing her cry was pretty far down on the list of things I wanted to see.

“Oh no! I made it worse!” I tried to joke. Thankfully, she laughed. A sad, pitiful little sound that was only barely audible. If I hadn’t been straining to hear even the faintest sign of happiness, I probably would have missed it. But I had been listening, and so I joined her with my own awkward chuckle.

The interruption to her tears was enough to regain the clarity we’d fought for, and after another few seconds of wiping her face and readjusting damp clothes, she sighed, “They stopped selling my favorite muffins.”

“Oh yeah. I noticed they were different,” I said mostly to myself. Although she wasn’t really listening, I still felt compelled to apologize for fate’s grievances. “I’m sorry. That really sucks.”

“The new ones aren’t good, so I don’t eat them. But I don’t like change.”

Her words cut to my core, and my stomach flipped at the thought. Because I was sure it wasn’t just a muffin to her. It was part of the foundation of her day. One of the many steps she had to take to make sure things felt okay. I felt even worse when I realized that I hadn’t noticed the plate beside her being empty.

“I’m working on it, though,” she assured me, and I nodded in response mostly because I felt she wanted me to. It didn’t feel right, though. I wanted her to know that what she felt was understandable. Relatable, even. 

“I don’t like change either,” I told her.

Curiously, she answered, “I know. I can tell.”

There wasn’t a lot of time for me to determine what she really meant by the comment, although I had a pretty good idea. After all, I knew that we were similar, too.

“I tried to tell myself everything would be okay like everyone told me I should, but they were wrong,” she tried to explain calmly, but her words became more difficult to decipher when her lips started to quiver with held back tears. “Things aren’t okay. Things went very bad.”

She looked down at her empty hands, then looked past them to her soiled dress. I heard the crashing in my head, again, and I wondered just how awful the fabric must feel against her skin.

“Hey, it’s alright. It was just a cup,” I whispered, “They’ve got a bunch of them.”

“But I _broke_ it,” she cried, “I broke it and now it’ll never be the same again.”

“That’s true, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” I said while simultaneously using every bit of willpower I had to not touch her. I wanted to grab her hand and reassure her that broken things aren’t always bad. That broken things can be beautiful and worthy, too. Because she wasn’t talking about the cup.

“It’s _broken_ ,” she clarified with careful enunciation.

It was never about the cup.

“You know, people have a tendency to… project their feelings onto things sometimes when they’re upset,” I spoke slowly, carefully, watching for any sign of discomfort. I expected to find some, but there was surprisingly very little. In fact, the thing I noticed most was a small, understanding smile that graced her lips. 

“You said people like you aren’t one,” she laughed.

“It feels that way sometimes, doesn’t it?” I returned, just ecstatic to see that the smile didn’t wane. It stayed, stuck to her features and spreading to her fingers that were moving in patterns that were noticeably less distressed. I needed that to ask the next part.

“Do you think that it might not be the cup you’re worried about?”

Knocking her heel against the asphalt, she only glanced at me for a second before she answered, “Maybe sometimes.”

“I understand.” 

She looked at me then, with eyes wide and observant. Eyes that I couldn’t have lied to even if I wanted to. The butterflies in my stomach spread through my whole body, and the wind from their wings sent tingles over my skin. And without even thinking, the truth flowed from me with no regret or hesitation. With the fullest confidence that she would understand.

“If it’s any consolation, the cup might be broken, but I don’t think you are,” I whispered, “In fact, I think you’re pretty neat.”

When she looked away then, it didn’t seem to be out of fear or overstimulation. She looked… bashful. Happy. Fortunately, the new vantage point alerted her of something else. Something that would stop me from pouring my heart out to her on the city sidewalk.

“Your socks don’t match,” she said, pointing to my ankles that showed under my slacks.

“No! They don’t,” I agreed a bit too enthusiastically, “I do it on purpose.”

“Why?”

I probably should’ve thought about my answer but ended up deciding that the truth was the easiest, safest way to go.

“For good luck.”

“Luck isn’t real,” she stated matter-of-factly. But after letting herself find amusement in the idea, she turned to me with narrowed eyes and careful words spoken through the side of her mouth. “Does it work?”

Rocking my head back and forth a few times in a simulation of thought, I met her eyes again when I tried to talk. But then she was there, with a full smile on her face and comfort in her eyes that I wasn’t expecting. She asked me if the luck was real, like I wasn’t looking right at evidence it existed.

“Maybe sometimes.”

We both shared a laugh unlike the others. Vulnerable and honest and… hopeful. That feeling only intensified when she spoke again, low in volume and tone, like it was a secret to keep from the rest of the world.

“Thanks for bringing me my headphones.”

“Yeah, things are loud in the city,” I sighed before leaning back on my hands so I could take in more of the sight of shopfronts and citizens. “It can be a bit much sometimes.”

“Yeah,” she agreed halfheartedly. When I felt her eyes on me, I made the executive decision not to look. Mostly because I was scared the vision of her would rob the little air left in my lungs. It turned out to be one of the best things I’d ever done, because without my eyes inspecting her, she made her own set of decisions.

Her hands lowered, too, joining mine on the concrete between us. It was subtle, but her pinky settled against mine just enough that it didn’t scare her when I took the initiative and hooked mine around it. She said nothing, but I felt the way our hands flushed in the sunlight and the comfort of understanding one another.

“It’s kind of nice right now, though,” she said.

“Yeah,” I answered, “It is.”


End file.
